Last year, I showed a video documenting how Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel were persecuting Messianic Jews by personally harassing and stalking Messianic Jews.
This year, a state-wide teen Bible knowledge competition, initially promoted by rabbis, was soon boycotted by many rabbis as they found that one of the winners was a Messianic Jew.
Also earlier this year, the Israeli Ministry of Interior was revoking the citizenship of Messianic Jews in Israel, forcing them to leave the country.
In March of 2008, a young Messianic Jewish teen, Amiel Ortiz, son of a Messianic pastor, was critically injured as he opened up an exploding package delivered to their home. The blast of the bomb shattered the windows of their home and the nearby automobiles, sending nails and over 100 pieces of shrapnel to permeate the boy's body. Amazingly, if not miraculously, the boy remains alive. The security cameras which Amiel's father installed on their home after an anonymous firebombing last year caught a well-known Jewish extremist delivering the explosive package to their home.
15 year old Amiel Ortiz, a Messianic Jew who was critically injured in a bomb delivered by Jewish extremists
Today, CNN is reporting that Jewish students from the city of Or Yehuda, near Tel Aviv, rounded up New Testaments in the city and burned them en masse.
The man responsible for organizing the students was Deputy Mayor of Or-Yehuda, Uzi Aharon. Uzi Aharon claims he did not intend to burn the New Testaments, he only meant to round them up to prevent missionizing in his city.
Uzi Aharon is a member of the Shas political party in Israel, an Ultra-Orthodox party that currently holds several seats in the Israeli Knesset.
Fortunately, many Conservative and Reform rabbis are condemning this New Testament burning. Derek Leman cites an excellent piece from a Conservative Jewish leader condemning the burnings.
Understanding the Persecution
I do not write this to villify Orthodox Jews. So many Orthodox Jews are zealous for Torah and for God; I understand where Orthodox Jews are coming from. To them, a Messianic Jew is a Christian, a member of a religion foreign to Torah; an idolatrous religion. Becoming a Christian means abandoning Jewish identity, Jewish culture, Jewish religion -- even Hitler could not make Jews lose their Jewish identity; how much worse, then, is converting to Christianity!
(To this day, in some Jewish circles, if an Orthodox Jew comes to believe in Y'shua as Messiah, family members will recite traditional prayers reserved for his or her death; to these Jews, faith in Y'shua is the death of a Jew.)
The reality of the matter, however, is not as the Orthodox Jews perceive it. Nor as the Christians perceive it, for that matter. The reality is that Messianic Judaism is not a Jewish flavor of Christianity.
While alone I cannot speak for all, I can say that many see Christianity as a Roman-led departure from the Hebrew faith. While many beautiful things have come from the Christian religion, and while God has used it to bring 1/3rd of the whole gentile world to the God of Israel through the Messiah of Israel, we must still contrast Christianity with the Hebrew faith.
The early believers in Y'shua as the Moshaich of Yisrael were initially known as Nazarenes, members of the Way community of Jews; they were not part of a new religion. Indeed, they kept the Torah as any God-fearing person ought to, received instruction at Beit HaMikdash (Temple), and were standing members in the Jewish community.
What happened in 325 CE was the official creation of a new state religion, and what came out of that has become what we know as Christianity today. This Roman religion in numerous ways is a departure from the Hebrew faith. It is indeed idolatrous in its praying to saints, in praying to Messiah's mother, in its claims of an infallible human being elected by the College of Cardinals, in its replacing Israel with an unclean people, in its replacement of God's Feasts with holidays of pagan origin, and most of all, its rejection of Torah.
When Constantine severed the Hebrew origins of this faith in Messiah, a new religion was officially created. It is this religion that Orthodox Jews fear their relatives and friends becoming members of. Many Orthodox Jews are zealous for God and do not wish to see Jewish folks severing their Jewish culture, identity, religion.
Ditto.
It is with earnest conviction I say that Messianic faith does not wish a loss of Jewish culture, a loss Jewish identity, especially not a loss of Jewish religion. There is no need to be baptized into Christianity. (Indeed, if one is already following Torah, a regular mikvah for outward cleansing is already prescribed!) There is no need to go to a Christian Church. There is no need to convert. Messianic faith requires one thing alone: faith in Messiah. Trust that the Jew from Natzeret, Y'shua ben Yosef, is the Moshiach foretold by the prophets in the Tenakh. As Rabbi Hallel once said, "Everything else is details."
I do not excuse this persecution by the Orthodox. One must not confuse understanding for agreement. Unfortunately, I suspect that the Orthodox will not see Messiah until he reveals himself in the flesh, again. Perhaps this time around, it will be the gentiles, with their idolatrous religion, who stumble on the stone laid in Tziyon. Or perhaps God's plan is that Jews and gentiles alike will finally be united in their faith in the God of Israel through Messiah.
At this time, however, it looks like many Christians will refuse to give up ties to the idolatry in their religion and that will be their stumbling block, just as it was for many of the devout Jews in Messiah's day.
We will see. Whatever the plan, I hope we see it come to fruition in our day, and soon; things sure are heating up down here on planet earth. Father help us.